WELCOME TO MY HEALTH & FITNESS BLOG!

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Tuesday, May 27, 2014

* The page
that you are on right now (www.halfofgabby.blogspot.com) is no longer posting
new articles and information. Half of Gabby has moved to www.halfofgabby.com
and will continue to post new material regularly! In addition, all older
articles have been updated on the new site!

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You all know what to do to lose weight. You stop eating like a damn sumo wrestler and you start moving your ass. Right? Right. So then why do so many of us fail at losing weight? If we know what to do with our bodies, what to feed it, and how to move it, then why can't we lose the damn weight? Well, I failed miserably for 10 years but I finally figured it out. I lost 120 pounds six years ago and have successfully kept it off. The answers to losing weight might surprise you... They sure as hell surprised me.

The answer all comes down to three Ps. And all three of these Ps live in our brains.

Ah, the brain. If I've learned anything through my journey it's that our bodies are these brilliant, ingenious, and amazing machines. But our brains? Our brains are dumb bitches.

I don't know about you but trying to reel in my frazzled brain and take control of the vast amount of tentacles it has wiggling around in there is pretty friggin' hard to do.

We tend to over-think things. We analyze, replay, rehash, review, second guess, and ponder our issues until we're straight up stupid. We beat our brains up so badly that we often lose all motivation and end up emotionally defunct.

This definitely applies to a woman who is trying to lose weight. Am I eating too much? Am I eating the right things? Am I exercising enough? Which kinds of exercises should I be doing? Why haven't I lost more weight? Am I doing something wrong?

STOP THINKING SO MUCH.

Eat healthy and move... And don't stop. That's it. That's all you need to do. Let me say it again.

1. Eat healthy
2. Move
3. Don't stop

Number 3 is the most important step.

It's also the hardeststep. Why is it the hardest step? Because it’s hard as balls to keep going, that’s why. Number 3 is your first P.

PERSEVERANCE

Perseverance is one of the most important keys to losing weight.

Everybody wants a quick fix. Everybody wants an easy answer. Here’s the dealio. The answers are as easy… or as difficult as YOU make them. And let’s be honest, the single most effective way to lose weight is to keep doing the things that are going to make you lose weight. Duh. Easy, right? Oh if our brains would just let it be then yes, it would be easy. But our brains want immediate results. There is no such thing as immediate results with losing weight. You MUST stay on track and keep going. It takes time. It takes perseverance. What is the biggest reason we ALL fail in losing our weight? We quit. We get frustrated, we start to lose our motivation, and we just balls-out quit. I kept quitting for 10 years. Over and over again I’d start… and then just stop. I’m just gonna go ahead and say it even though it’s blatantly obvious. If you quit, you will not reach your goal. Again… DUH

It doesn’t matter how damn healthy you’re eating or how much you are exercising, if you don’t keep doing it… it won’t work. There are a kabillion successful fitness plans and weight-loss regimens out there. Which one you are following doesn’t matter not one bit. They ALL will work if you keep doing it. If you keep persevering.

Our second P is very closely related to our first P, Perseverance… but yet it is so very, very different.

Our second P is Patience.

PATIENCE

Ah, patience. Who the hell has time for that? If you want to be successful in losing weight, you better damn well find the time for it. Let me explain the difference between perseverance and patience.

Perseverance is never giving up. It’s when no matter what is going on around you, no matter what obstacles show up and try to break you, no matter how badly you want to quit… you keep going anyway. You forge through it all. You don’t stop.

Patience is the act of doing all of the same exact things as perseverance… but you do them with grace. You forgive yourself for mistakes, you don’t allow setbacks to devastate you, you understand that this is a process, and you take time to ENJOY the journey as it happens.You allow yourself happiness while you're working towards your goals… and not just saving it for when you reach your goals.

It takes us months or even years to finally gear up to try to lose weight and get healthy and all of a sudden...

BAM!!!!

It's an emergency! We want to drop 10 pounds in the first week, we want to drop 30 pounds in the first month, we want to be donning swim suits after a few months... we want everything to happen RIGHT THE HELL NOW!

Whoa.Hold up, killers.

Bring this shit down a notch. That's not how it's gonna work. Think about it.

You've spent how long living an unhealthy lifestyle? One year? Five years? I had a decade under my sumo belt. How 'bout you? I bet it's been a while. Maybe not 10 years like me but come on, be honest with yourself.

You are not going to have your dream body next week, next month, or maybe not until next year. It took me two years to lose all of my weight. If you keep thinking and hoping things will happen immediately, you're going to get discouraged and disheartened... And you're gonna want to quit. I can guarantee it.

From day one, you need to come to a resolve. You need to accept that this shit is going to take a while. And obviously the more weight you need to lose, the longer it's going to take. For those of you who only have 10-20 pounds to lose, this isn't going to be as hard for you. For those looking to lose a larger amount of weight, it is absolutely essential that you be realistic.

If you can't hunker down and be willing to sail the rough seas along with the smooth ones, your ship is gonna sink... Along with your hopes. This is not meant to be harsh, it's the simple truth.

I had 120 pounds to lose.I was staring down a goal so big, it made me want to throw up when I thought about it. I wanted to lose it all like right the EFF now. I was so damn proud of myself for finally getting the motivation and taking action, that I wanted to see results immediately. Well, I was very quickly bitch-slapped by reality. If I wouldn't have learned the art of patience, there's no way I would've ever reached my goals.

So there's your second P, Patience. In other words…

CALM YOUR TITS.

The biggest key to losing weight is not in what you do but in how you think.

Which leads us to our third P.

PERCEPTION

The way you think, your perception, is going to determine if success is going to happen for you. You can have 10 people trying to lose weight and they're all going to think about their journeys in a different way.Statistics show that only 1 out of those 10 people will lose their weight and keep it off. I am in that 10% and I truly believe it is because of how I chose to perceive my journey.

How I perceived my journey in the beginning was not how I perceived it through the middle nor in the end. My perception changed as I went. The more trials and tribulations I faced, the more I learned about not only the process of losing weight but about myself.

I had to overcome a lot of obstacles and roadblocks before I started to realize something. The more I wished time away, the longer it seemed to take. And more importantly, the more I wished the time to pass, the less I was enjoying right now.

I wasn't living in the present, I was living in the future.

I wouldn't allow myself to just be happy in the moment. It was always I will be happy... Someday. Once I had my dream body, everything was going to be great. Once I lost my weight, everything was going to be great. I'll be proud of myself after I lost my weight. My life will be perfect AFTER I lost all my weight.

It was bullshit. Every damn bit of it was complete and utter bullshit. Everything I was doing was right. But everything I was thinking was wrong. Dead wrong.

One day about six months into my journey I started crying and I just couldn't stop. I just felt so overwhelmed and discouraged because things were going so slow. It felt like it was going to take forever to reach my goals.

I talked to my husband, Jay about how I was feeling. He talked to me for hours while I cried and cried. He held me, reassured me, and told me that everything I was doing was working. Slow and steady… but it was working.

He reminded me that no matter how long it took, I had the power to see to it that it did in fact happen. “Just stay the course.”, he said.

His logic was exactly what I needed. I’m a very emotional being, I needed Jay's non-emotional perspective. Because I'm always so lost in my head and beating all the dead horses in there, I often lose sight of the facts. Cold, hard facts.

All that over-thinking is a sure fire way to derail even the most solid and successful of plans.

I was able to take a journey that was headed for yet another failure and turn it around into one that was going to be successful... all because I chose to think differently.

Who the frig cares how long it takes?! Why was I crying? I had just put six amazing months into getting healthy and fit. Each and every month after Jay measured me, I was a little bit smaller than the month before. I should've been praising myself. I should've been proud of myself. Who friggin' cares how long before I had my dream body?

As long as I stayed the course, each day I was going to be one day closer to my goal. Why should I be miserable until then? That's ridiculous!

And what kind of message was I sending to myself? That I can't be happy unless I'm at goal weight? That my weight determines what kind of a person I am? That if I'm not lean and fit, I'm not worthy of a good life or to be happy right now? Screw that shit!

I changed my outlook right then and there. Just like that. There was no way I was spending one more minute feeling sorry for myself or chastising myself. I was doing everything on my end to get the job done, the rest was up to my body. I made a decision at that moment that I was going to start to trust myself... And trust the process.

As long as I did the right thing, there was no way to fail.

I had a 100% chance of hitting my goal weight if I just kept going.

That's some damn good odds!

If I kept working hard, I'd have my dream body someday. But for now, I was going to be happy and live in the present.

It was the most amazing feeling ever.

I spent all that time wondering WHEN it was going to happen. What I should’ve been thinking instead was that it WAS going to happen. If you are constantly worrying about how long it's going to take, you'll be miserable and negative. But if you're constantly reminding yourself that it WILL happen, it's just amazing and positive.

How you perceive your journey determines what kind of journey you will have.

PERCEPTION IS EVERYTHING.

The single most accurate indicator in whether or not you're going to complete your journey is whether or not you believe that you will.

That belief will keep you going. It will help keep you motivated and determined. It will help you push through obstacles.

If you truly understand that hard work and perseverance will get you there, you will be unstoppable.

So how can you lose weight? What's the secret?

The three Ps. Perseverance, Patience, and Perception.

The secret is not in what you do... It's in how you think.

It took me two years to lose 120 pounds. I know that seems like a long time but you know what? It really isn't. The time flew by. The months whizzed by so fast that before I knew it I had 6 months under my belt, then a year, and so on.

And you know what makes it go even faster? When you're not wishing the time away.

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CRAZY IS ALL IN A DAY'S WORK

My whole lifeI have been described as crazy and funny by other people. And I don't mean crazy as in truly certifiably crazy, I mean more as in I say what comes to my mind . I think a big part of the reason people think I'm funny is because I say what everyone else is thinking. People who don't know me are sometimes taken aback by my candidness and those who know me try to be prepared, but are still often left shaking their heads. My Hubs is famous for shaking his head at me. He'll try to say he's grossed out or shocked but he secretly loves it. It's part of my charm and why he fell in love with me ;)

I would not describe myself as crazy. But we all catch the crazies every once in a while, fo sho. But I do say what's on my mind and I do have a fondness for dirty words.

I do love to laugh though, so it's a good thing I married a funny man. I grew up with a big italian family with wicked funny humor. My father's side was more the dirty, foul mouthed humor and my mother's side was more the witty, clever humor. Either way, it was all freakin' hilarious, so I had to catch the funnies...it's in my blood. I love spending time with people who enjoy getting their own smile on. A night of hanging with family and friends and laughing until my stomach hurts is my perfect kind of evening.

It's not all funny business though, I try hard to be a good person and work hard on bettering myself all the time. I hope to have the privilege of living a long life and I hope to die being the very best version of myself. One of my biggest goals in this life is to inspire and empower other women to start their own journeys. Weight loss journeys really aren't about losing weight at all. They're about gaining life. It's amazing how health and fitness serves as a portal into a world where you learn to love and respect yourself. A world where you see your beauty, the true beauty that lives inside of you and makes you who you really are.

I've been through my share of shit(as has everybody) and have had to endure days that will not soon be forgotten. My past is what attributed to me becoming a therapist. I believe that being happy isn't having a life void of problems, but is being a person who knows how to deal with the problems. Trials and tribulations are a part of life, it's a fact...shit happens....so you gotta learn how to forge through it. And life at any moment can turn your world upside down. So I consider any day that my family is happy and healthy, well, that's a great day...and something to be so very, very grateful for.

My wish is to create a badass army of empowered women.This is the main reason I created my blog, Half of Gabby. I realized if I could learn to conquer my obesity and all the demons that caused it, I could maybe, just maybe, inspire other women to do the same. It saddens me to watch women keep their heads down, constantly pull at their clothes out of self-consciousness, and put themselves last in all areas of their life. I used to do that, all of it. When I see these women, I feel their heavy sadness because I too once felt it. I know how hard it is to lift that weight off of your shoulders. But I also know it's possible because I did it. And if I can do it, anybody can do it. So that's why I'm here... to build an army. An army of badass women who know their worth and see how beautiful they are, BEFORE and after they hit goal weight.

It's time to stare your fear down, go after your dreams, and start thinking and acting like the badass that you are.

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